MozyHome review

The MozyHome Cloud and local backup utility has a range of powerful features to ensure your files remain safely stored online even if disaster strikes on your home computer. Subscribing to Mozy will also give you access to MozySync, which is a Dropbox-style Cloud synchronisation tool for keeping files synchronised across multiple devices.

PRICING

For £5 per month, you get 50GB of Cloud backup space for one computer. Another £2 per month gives you a choice of either backing up another computer or another 20GB of space. There’s also a better-value £8 per month plan, for three computers and 125GB of total space, which would be ideal for families or users with multiple PCs with different files on each.

DESKTOP SOFTWARE

MozyHome’s desktop software makes it easy to set up regular backups, and also gives you plenty of customisable options so you can tailor the service to your liking.

Once installed, the application sits in the Windows notification tray, and lets you make a backup at any time with a single button press. Your first backup will likely take a long time, as Mozy will have to upload all your files from scratch. As with all backup services, successive backups will take less time because only files that have changed since the last backup are uploaded to Mozy’s service. You can allow Mozy to back up certain types of files automatically, such as images, documents, music, videos and contacts, or you can tell it to only back up specific folders on your PC.

The various options within the application should mean that every user will be able to create a backup plan which not only suits their schedule, but also their computer and internet performance. Scheduling backups is very simple, and these scheduled events can be delayed until it’s a more convenient time for a backup. You can also stop backups from taking place under certain conditions, such as if your processor is too busy.

You can change the speed at which backups are uploaded to stop the program from hogging your internet connection, and you can also slow down the encryption of your files that takes place locally so backups don’t impact system performance too much.

You can also set Mozy to make a local backup at the same time as a Cloud backup. With this tool, you can back up to external drives such as USB flash drives, although you can’t make the software back up to a NAS in this way.

If the worst happens and you need to recover files, the application makes it easy for you. You can select from the files stored on the Cloud and recover them to where they were originally stored, or even restore to a new device if your original machine is no longer available. Files are stored for up to 30 days, and if you want to access an older version of a file, you can use the backup history tool to access all the previous iterations of backed-up files.

Also available is the separate MozySync software, which works more like a Cloud storage tool than a backup utility. Drop files into the MozySync folder on your PC and the files will be synced to any computer on which you install MozySync, and will count towards your total Mozy storage allocation.

WEB INTERFACE

The Mozy web interface acts as a basic file explorer for your backed-up and MozySync files. It’s a little slow; each folder takes a couple of seconds to load, and there’s no media viewer and very little in the way of file previews available beyond images.

It’s a great way of accessing backed up files remotely if you don’t have Mozy software installed on your PC, but it’s not nearly as advanced as the web products offered by Cloud sync services such as Box and Google Drive.

MOBILE APPS

Mozy provides smartphone and tablet apps for both Apple iOS devices and those running Android, but they left us cold. They’re quite slow, and aren’t very attractive to look at. It can be a challenge to find files, and the login process can take several minutes. They’re in serious need of an update, although if you’re in an emergency and need to access a file on the move, they are at least functional.

MozyHome is a good-value backup service that makes it easy to protect against catastrophic data loss. Its desktop app is excellent, and while its web interface and mobile apps leave a little to be desired, its backup capabilities alone are worth paying for. The addition of the MozySync service is also welcome, as it lets you have both backup and Cloud synchronisation in a single app. However, if you don’t mind using a separate sync service, Livedrive is better value purely for Cloud backups.